You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right. -- Maya Angelou

Friday, March 28, 2008

Amazon ... and the horse they rode in on!

I am going to regret this tomorrow.

At present, however, I have liquid courage, courtesy of the delightful bartender at the Mad Crab in Coupeville, Washington, who makes the best dang margaritas in the whole state.

But I'm pretty sure I'm going to regret this tomorrow.

Because, right now, I have angst.

More importantly, I have ire.

I have ire and I have fire.

As DH says, "Fire in the hole."

As I said, after finishing that last margarita, "It may be time for me to write my manifesto."

The timid conservative side of my soul resists doing this, but -- you know what? -- sometimes, even the timid have to overcome their inhibitions and take a stand.

I guess this is my stand.

In case you're wondering what the hell I'm going on about (besides margaritas), here's a little hint from Publisher's Weekly:

BookSurge, Amazon’s print-on-demand subsidiary, is making an offer that most publishers would like to refuse, but don’t feel they can. According to talks with several pod houses, BookSurge has told them that unless their titles are printed by BookSurge, the buy buttons on Amazon for their titles will be disabled.

Angela Hoy of Writers Weekly gives an in-depth descripton of what's going on. Regardless of whether you are a reader, a writer, or a publisher, you should take a look at this.

"POD" has a negative connotation in the literary world. It is associated with vanity publishing. The problem is that POD has nothing to do with a particular type of publishing or publisher. It is a way of printing books. My company is using Lightning Source to print our books. They are not self published. They are not vanity published. We are a traditional, royalty paying publisher.

(Yeah; I admit it. I've always wanted to say that, only without the asterisks ...)

DH says I am mad. And you know what? He's right.

I am so freaking mad that you cannot believe it. I cannot even believe it.

I am generally pretty temperate these days. But not today.

No. Today I am out of my mind with anger.

i will NOT cave in to these bastards.

I. will. not. do. it.

If you love books from any angle, and if you value diversity, then you will NOT do it either. This is not just capitalism. I AM a freaking capitalist. This is a blatant play to establish a monopoly.

If you like historical fiction, you'd better listen up. Historical fiction is NEVER a bestseller unless it's written by a Michael Crichton or a Dan Brown. It NEVER is and the books you like are AT RISK as long as smaller independent publishers are at risk of being put out of business by this type of behaviour by Amazon.

If you CARE, you will PAY ATTENTION and you will NOT buy books from Amazon as long as they're maintaining this position.